Bruggge-Procession of The Golden Tree

Imagine a parade that tells the 800 year history of the City in vignettes, floats, horses, singing 10,000 props and costumes. Thousands, literally thousands, of people are in the parade, and the parade lasts 2 hours. If you can fathom all of that, that it is called the Procession of the Golden Tree Parade in Brugge, Belgium. It is so huge and labor intensive, it is only held once every five years.

When an event of that scale pops up in a nearby city, obviously it is worth attending. It was also excellent that Marc’s brother, Eric, and sister-in-law, Susan, were visiting us, with Eric and Marc heading one direction to a military museum, Susan and I headed out to the parade.

Susan is a great traveling companion which made the 3 hour wait for the parade to start zoom by, not to mention we made new friends, Felix and Ingrid from Dusseldorf Germany.

“The Pageant of the Golden Tree takes place every five years and is inspired by the festivities to celebrate the marriage of Charles the Bold and Margaret of York in 1468. The Golden Tree was the symbol of the chivalric tournament that was held on the Market Square as part of these celebrations. The modern day procession involves more than 2,000 costumed participants, several ‘giants’ and various decorated floats.”

~Travels with Pam… and SusanLæs mere